Never Again
by XxBlaiddxX
Summary: A Novelization of the season 4 episode 'Never Again'. This is not my own work-it's a joint fic. Kudos go to Nina. :D:D:D Lets hope she doesn't mind me posting this. :P
1. Chapter 1

This was an idea my friend Nina and I had. She's written Chapter Three and I wrote the other two so far. So she gets mucho credits!!! This isn't my favorite episode, but jealous Mulder/Moody Scully are OH SO irresistible to write for! :D:D:D Hope you enjoy. 3

*****

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"If there are no further motions, the Superior court of the state of Pennsylvania Declares case no. BD270 closed."

"BAM!'' The judges gavel rapped like a slap in Edward Jerse's face. He knew this is the way it would end, but now that his divorce was final, he sunk lower than he ever had.

She looks so happy over there, he thought. Too happy. He wanted to slap that pretty little smile right off of Cindy's face. There she was, shaking her lawyers hands, looking as proud as a new mama.

He glanced down at the piece of paper in front of him, reading the words but not actually seeing them. He knew his lawyer was standing over him somewhere, waiting anxiously for Ed to sign them.

*No way out*

Looking back at his moments-away-to-be-ex-wife, he braced himself, picked up a pen, and slashed his signature.

****

Strains of 'Tattooed Love Boys' came crashing through the bar. guess 'strains' wasn't the right word. 'Blare' was a better one.

*Miserable sonofabitch*

Ed downed his latest whiskey and didn't sigh. It felt like he should sigh, but he wasn't that sort of a man. Pain. That was his outlet.

Do you know what you are? He asked himself. you're pathetic. Pathetic and _Worthless_. he let that word wash over him, let it sink in. There it was. There was the pain.

*Not worth anything. not worth your car, your house, your kids.*

_Especially not your kids. _

He pointed to the bar hopefully as the bar tender walked by.

"No way, man. pay up."

Money money money and more money. He took out his wallet and handed the tender his credit card, wondering to himself if there was anything left on it. Oh well, He'd find out soon enough. Oh. look at that.

flipping through his wallet he noticed a picture of himself and his boys. _His_ boys?

_Her_ boys. He took a drag of his cigarette, making the red tip glow brighter. Something was wrong about the picture. Something didn't belong. Leaning forward he burnt himself out of the picture. there.

There.

That was better.

****

It was storming as Ed left the bar. Haha. Miserable man. No car! No matter. He'd get back to his apartment somehow. Ooh, he was drunk. But lucid! He wasn't sure if that was possible.

He gravitated toward the bright neon light of the tattoo parlor, seeking a little shelter from the rain under the overhang. All the different display tattoos caught his eye:

Devils, witches, death, sculls-

His eyes went elsewhere. To the pinups. and the girls. Lighting crashed as he looked into a dark-haired beauty winking coyly, with the words 'Never Again' written underneath her.

And he knew what he had to do.

****

He got to the place he had called 'home' the last 3 months, threw off his shirt, and started taking off the bandage. He HAD to see her.

*RIIIIP!*

There she was. She looked sunburned from the tattooing, but she was still so beautiful. She seemed to look into his eyes, as if she could read his mind.

Suddenly, waves of nausea racked Ed's Pain. Terrible, terrible pain. Crying out, he sank to his knees, then not being able to stand it, he passed out from the pain.

If Ed Jerse had been conscious, he would have seen that the girl wasn't winking anymore.

Both eyes were open, her wicked mouth smiling in laughter.

TO BE CONTINUED....


	2. Chapter 2

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Constitution Gardens

Washington, D.C.

2:35 A.M.

"And these unknown craft? Where were the majority sighted?"

Scully was only half listening to the man as he answered Mulder's question, her thoughts elsewhere as the foreign man let his story unfurl. She really didn't see the point in this early-morning interview.

"On route home, me, others," the man told Mulder in thick, broken English, "walk on the minefield by base. Long black car drive up, no door handle, no window. No persons drive. We run. Mines, explosion, but…no sound. Nothin'."

…And so her interest was in the conversation was lost completely.

As Mulder continued to press for answers, for further details to the man's story, Scully found herself wandering away from them, drawn instead towards the names inscribed on the memorial monument. She still caught disconnected snatches of their discussion, but for the most part, there words seemed to fade in and out of notice.

A splash of colour, out of place against the gray granite caught Scully's eye: someone had left red roses and a red model car at the base of the monument. There was also a handwritten note, and she knelt down to read it:

_brother, twenty years later…i still miss you. we know what you did was right._

Touched and saddened by the gesture, and perhaps thinking of her father, Scully picked up one of the fallen rose petals, already dried and rust-coloured, and held it in her hand.

-x-

Ed Jerse's Office Cubicle

Fuller and Siegel

As he waited for someone to pick up the phone, Ed stared with a mixture of satisfaction and disgust at the photograph of him with his children that he had stuck to his computer monitor.

_No_, he thought, with a rueful smirk, _Not me. Some faceless deadbeat sonofabitch. _

_Not me._

The phone line finally clicked and a woman's voice answered. Ed launched into his scripted spiel:

"Hello. Mrs. DeNunzio, hi. This is Ed Jerse over at Fuller and Siegel. How are you this morning?"

Mrs. DeNunzio gave a short whine about her kids, which Ed tried to cut off as quickly and politely as possible (_the trick is to be polite)_, hoping that he didn't sound as harried as he felt.

"I understand. I just wanted to call and let you in on a stock that's going public next week—"

Another meaningless complaint, another interruption, this time a shout to quiet the sounds of kids fighting in the background.

"A company in Tucson called Cryo-Cord has achieved an amazing advancement in the technology of cryogenics," continued Ed, knowing that Mrs. DeNunzio had already begun to lose interest in what he had to say, he didn't even really care about what he had to say. If he had been Mrs. DeNunzio, he would have hung up on him right after 'hello'.

"You see, stem cells from the blood of an umbilical cord may be transplanted in the treatment of many life-threatening diseases such as—"

_**Loser.**_

Ed stopped talking, at a loss. He couldn't believe that Mrs. DeNunzio had just said what he'd heard.

"Such as?" she asked.

"What?"

"Diseases such as?" Mrs. DeNunzio prompted him to continue, as if she hadn't just insulted him. Ed felt sick.

"Before that," he demanded, "What did you say?"

"I didn't say nothing," she replied peevishly, "You were talking."

Suddenly the cackling sound of a woman's laughter erupted nearby; the sound was in his ears and he knew that it was directed at him. He spun wildly around, trying to locate the sound.

He tore of his headset and strode over to a nearby cubicle, steaming.

"Say it to my face."

The two women stopped chattering and looked at him, but Ed failed to notice the questions in their eyes.

"Right to my face," his voice climbed slowly into a yell, "Now that I'm in front of you, call me a loser to my face!"

"Calm down, Ed."

But then that evil voice again--

_**Trash her desk!**_

Without thinking Ed lunged at the cluttered desk and violently shoved everything to the floor.

The next thing he knew, someone was holding his arm back, and his manager had appeared.

"Why don't you go home, Ed?" she told him calmly.

"We'll discuss this later."


	3. Chapter 3

Dana Scully sat in Fox Mulder's chair. At Fox Mulder's desk. Fondling Fox Mulder's nameplate.

Looking around her, she saw all of the things that belonged to him- his poster, his little charts, his diagrams of alien organisms/internal organs/fetuses.

Then there were the X-files. Which....Were all his without a doubt.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that when Mulder burst through his own door, she jumped a little.

"I made a last ditch effort to get out of it, but the Bureau is holding fast to it's federal employees vacation policy. I haven't taken a day off in four years, so either I take a week off now, or they start not paying me for eight weeks' vacation time. I don't like it, but I got to do it. I got to pay the rent, I got to eat. ", Mulder said all at once.

It occurred to Scully that the faster he talked, the more his grammar suffered. She kept turning his nameplate around and around, hearing him but not really listening.

"Part of me can't help thinking this is just another way to get me out of here," he continued.

"But is is only a week, and I'll still have you to stay here and keep an eye on things for me, so--

--Here's a few things for you to keep an eye on while I'm gone."

Scully had lost him many sentences back, and stated the thought that she'd been going over the past ten minutes-

"Why don't I have a desk?" She raised her eyes to his and waited for the answer.

"Wha...What do you mean?" He shook his head is confusion as if she had just told him that she was having his baby.

She turned his nameplate around and pointed at the two words on it.

"Fox. Mulder. That's the only name on here."

"Well...I just always assumed....that..._that_ was your area..." His hands made a wide swoop to the back of his office, where the copier used to be.

"Back...there?" She couldn't help but feel a little more under appreciated.

Mulder began to get a little impatient. She obviously hadn't been listing to him the past 5 minutes, and he wanted her out of this mood, pronto.

"Ok, We'll have them send down another desk, and there won't be any room to move around here, let alone breathe or think, but we can put them really close together, face to face, and maybe on our off-hours we can play some battleship."

She swallowed and lowered her eyes onto the desk. He was being flippant ad sarcastic. He was at his rudest and yet his most charming.

Her voice raised as she tried to lighten the mood.

"What is it you wanted me to keep an eye on?"

"The contact we met, last night at the wall, who had the distinction of being present for a first. That being you _abandoning _me during questioning. In the future I'll make sure all those people being interviewed provide you with a multi-media laser show to keep your interest maintained."

She just looked at him, and tried very hard not to slap him.

"In any case, his name is Vsevlod Pudovkin. He's a Russian immigrant with a doctorate in astronautical engineering. He, and other contacts, worked at a military space center in the Republic of Karelia."

He opened a folder on the desk to reveal the face of a rugged but kind looking man, with grey eyes and a full beard.

She played with his desk nameplate like a child, looking down at the photo, but never making eye contact with her partner.

He propped his feet up on the other side of the desk and went on,

"They smuggled out reverse engineered reports of two alien crafts, which crashed and were retrieved from the Sea of Barents."

"And these reports are for sale?" she tried, but she couldn't keep the mockery out of her voice.

"At a high price, yeah."

"Mm-hmm. And have you confirmed the identity of these individuals?"

"That's your assignment while I'm gone. I want you to run an I.N.S. check and a Bureau N.C.I.C. check on these individuals, all of whom reside in the Little Russia section of of Philadelphia."

He pushed a small piece of paper towards her, which had five unpronounceable Russian names on it.

"I've also made arrangements for travel so you can administer eye-to-eye surveillance on their activities. "

On top of the list of names he laid one two-way plane ticket to Philadelphia.

"I'm not going." She said evenly.

He laughed a little as if she was joking. "Wha...what do you mean?

She took a deep breath. "Your contact, while interesting in the context of science fiction, was, at least in my memory, recounting a poorly veiled synopsis of an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle."

" "Eenie, meenie, chili beanie, the spirits are about to speak" ?" He grinned, waiting for her to explain.

"Rocky and Bullwinkle are looking for an Upsidasium mine. Boris Badenov alters the road signs, which causes them to walk onto a secret military base, where they are picked up by a car with no windows and no door locks, and there are silent explosions from a compound called 'Hushaboom'."

"So... you're refusing an assignment based on the adventures of 'Moose and Squirrel'?" He accented the last part with a cheesy russian accent.

" "Refusing as assignment"? That makes it sound like you're my superior."

That had done it. The smile was gone from his face. He was annoyed now.

"Do what you want. Don't go to Pennsylvania. But let me remind you that I've worked my _ass _off to get these files reopened. You were just assigned, but this work is my _life."_

"And it's become mine." She said softly.

"You don't want it to be?"

"This isn't about you. Or maybe is is, indirectly, I don't know." She sighed. "I feel like I've lost sight of myself, Mulder. It's hard to see, let alone _find_ in the darkness of covert locations. I...I wish I could say that we're going around in circles, but we're not. We're just going in an endless line. Two steps forward and then three steps back....While my own life is....standing still." She looked up at him, hoping he would realize what she was saying, understand her somehow.

"Well then, maybe it's good that we get away from each other once in a while."

She looked down at the desk, and swallowed again in the silence. She looked up a little and watched him stride across the room and pickup his bag.

"Where will you be?"

"Ironically enough, it's personal."

_Too personal to not tell your partner?_ She thought, but didn't share.

"It's a...a place that I've always wanted to go, what I anticipate to be a spiritual journey. I hope to...discover something about about myself." He said quietly.

"Maybe you should do the same."

He left and closed the door gently.

Scully reached into her pocket and pulled our the rose petal that she had pocketed early that morning. She looked at it and then past it, thinking about what Mulder had said.

She gently laid it on the desk.


End file.
